Tony Campolo calls Chalke “the Billy Graham of the UK” and seems to think that he speaks rather ex cathedra for a segment of the church, i.e. Chalke accepting gay marriage means it is now accepted in the church.

Steve’s public declaration in support of Civil Partnerships will cause reverberations far and wide. His statement represents the first time that a major evangelist and leader in the Evangelical community has come out in support of same-sex relationships. Discussions about what he has done will reverberate from churches, youth groups, seminaries, Bible schools and denominations. Both those who support same-sex partnerships and gay marriage as well as those who oppose such developments will look upon Steve’s declaration as a watershed. It is one more evidence that a major shift is taking place on this controversial subject, not only within mainline Christianity, but among Evangelicals.

Not sure about that, but there it is.

Personally, I’m not against gay marriage. But I’m not really for it, either. For me it is a non-entity, something that can be neither accepted or rejected. Legislating gay marriage is like legislating the value of pi. It doesn’t really change what the is is.

Chalke uses rampant promiscuity as a cultural reason to legalize gay marriage. That seems weak to me, since marriage doesn’t seem to have caused a decrease in promiscuous heterosexual activity.

"The things I thought were so important - because of the effort I put into them - have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered." --Thomas Merton

"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works." --Robert Farrar Capon